Pima County, AZ Sign Regulations: Digital Billboards (2026)

Pima County Code Section 18.79.040 opens with a blanket rule: no person may erect, alter, maintain or relocate any sign listed in the section unless it is expressly regulated elsewhere in the chapter. Item 3 on that list is 'Electronic message signs,' full stop, with no exception carved out for a particular zone or sign type. Item 4 extends the ban to any sign that is flashing, blinking, reflective, inflatable, air-activated or animated, or that shows an intermittent or varying color or intensity of artificial illumination, whether the county built that into the sign on purpose or it happens because a component or light source is failing.

That double bar closes off digital billboard technology on both fronts: an LED billboard is an electronic message sign, and even if it weren't, its changing display would trip the animated/varying-illumination ban too. The chapter's billboard-specific rules at Section 18.79.080(A)(1) reinforce this by cutting illumination out of billboards altogether ('No illumination'), and the Dark Sky Protection Option at Section 18.79.100(A)(2), the provision that lets other sign types add 25 percent more area or height in exchange for shielded lighting, expressly states it 'does not apply to billboard signs.' There is no incentive track and no illuminated-copy variance for a billboard in unincorporated Pima County.

What remains legal is a static billboard face, up to 300 square feet in the CI-2/CI-3 zones, with a manually changed copy panel, since freestanding and wall signs elsewhere in the chapter are separately allowed a 'change of sign copy component.' A digital display simply isn't one of the sign types the chapter authorizes.